zip

John> At 06:17 PM 5/25/2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: John> Although I agree with KISS principles, I'm not buying the John> validity of the quipu as a good analogy in this situation. I'm John> no expert on quipu. Haven't read the books. There seems to be John> a cottage industry in theories about them. With 20th century John> computer data, though, if some future soul is interested in it, John> an understanding of ASCII and probably English will be assumed. Sure. But do you want to assume that these are still known? There are plenty of examples of languages and writing systems where this is no longer true (Etruscan, Easter Island). In some cases (Etruscan) the script is clear enough but that isn't sufficient to figure out the meaning. And there are other cases where language and writing were not known until some *very* smart people spent large quantities of brainpower sorting things out. Don't consider the Rosetta stone, that was a relatively simple job (that stone has the Greek translation right on it). Consider instead Linear B, or Sumerian cuneiform. Unless you want to assume that the language and encoding are NOT forgotten between now and the time when someone wants to read the archives, you have to use the Quipu (or Etruscan, or Sumerian, or Linear B) examples. It's worth while (and interesting) to read some of the literature on those subjects (for example the books by Chadwick on Linear B -- short yet very clear). You'll discover that this stuff isn't easy. It is not necessary to assume that people will be stupid -- instead, assume they are very smart, but they have to rediscover the basics from the record we're creating for them. See also http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/libIdeas.htm paul